Episode 083

• Listen/ download: http://boundless.typepad.com/podcast/2009/08/083-boundless-podcast.html
• Blog post: http://www.boundlessline.org/2009/08/i-know-what-you-did-this-summer.html

Lisa Anderson: Well we are opening up today’s inbox and I’m here in the studio with Suzanne. Hey Suzanne!

Suzanne Hadley: Hey Lisa!

Lisa:  Okay, Suzanne, it looks like this question is for you, given your current story [of Suzanne’s engagement] and your recent detailing of it in blog posts. So this is pretty interesting. We’ll hear your perspective on this one.

This listener says:

Your story is incredibly encouraging and I’m so happy for you, Suzanne. My own hope for a similar happy ending is fading but I want to keep hoping that it’s not too late for me.

Now your posts do raise a question for me: how do we juxtapose your story—

In finding Kevin, that’s what we’re talking about here.

—with Boundless’ admonitions to be intentional, “pull a Ruth” or “crack twigs”?

I think most women want to believe that they’ll meet their husbands in the course of their daily lives just as you did (I certainly do). Moreover, stories like yours reinforce the idea that we don’t need to do anything special to get married—that it will happen in God’s timing—and in the meantime we shouldn’t or needn’t worry. So, what is a girl to do?

Suzanne: Well, I think it would probably be helpful for anyone who’s listening who doesn’t know my story just to briefly say that the way that I met my fiancé is I walked into Starbucks one night and I was wearing a wordless book gospel bracelet which you use in children’s ministry, and he was the barista on duty and noticed my children’s ministry bracelet—he’s also very interested in children’s ministry, that’s his passion. And so we struck up a conversation and through the course of time he got hired at my church, we ended up doing some improv comedy together and then at the beginning of this year started co-leading a Bible study for young adults. And that’s how we really started to get to know each other, fell in love, and then got engaged.

So it is a really neat story because children’s ministry has been something that has been so core to who I am. I’m a children’s magazine editor and I’ve been teaching kids since I was 14, so the fact that I met someone in kind of a special way because I was wearing that bracelet makes our story seem a little bit fairy-tale-ish and I realise that. So I think it’s a good question as far as that balance between what is the “you” part and what is the “God” part in your love story.

And I think God did really weave my story together but at the same time, there were some basic factors going on in my life where I was following the Boundless advice to crack twigs and I didn’t have to pull a Ruth in my situation, but that’s just because it was a different story than Candice’s and Steve’s [members of the Boundless team].

Lisa:  And I think your story, kind of the fun—like you say, the fantastical—part about it is that here you are in Starbucks, you’re wearing a wordless bracelet, that kind of thing… I think actually the wildest part of the story is that then this guy shows up at your church and all of a sudden is helping out with children’s ministry.

But, at the same time, you’ve told as well the back end of that story of his sister, I think it was, telling him, “Hey, look at Suzanne.” And that’s very much a Boundless intentional message. And the fact that you started a small group together. And there was a serious lapse of time there, it wasn’t just like bam! and music sounded and he was like, “I’m off at eight, do you want to go out and do something?” There was time there and there were other elements to the story where both you of had to make conscious decisions to pursue the relationship and be intentional and overcome obstacles and say, “Hey, this is something that has potential.”

Suzanne: That’s right, and even the way that we met that first night… I was cracking twigs, which if you’re not familiar with that saying it’s the idea of women being responsive to men pursuing them. And actually that night I was having coffee with another guy. He was just someone who had come into my sphere and we were kind of getting to know each other, and Kevin doesn’t mind me saying this because he thinks it’s pretty funny that we met when I was having coffee with someone else. But even that step of openness toward another godly guy who was getting to know me ultimately led me to meet Kevin.

So there are things, I think, women should be seeing how they can be responsive to the men in their lives and be alert. And I want to write an article, at some point, that says “I kept looking.” That would be the title. Because I know so many women say, “Well once I stopped looking then there he was!” That wasn’t my story. I was trying to just be alert to what God was doing in my life and who He was bringing into my life and even through that I met Kevin.

Lisa:  I have another friend who got married this year who had a similar story in that she met her now-husband while both of them were attending a singles’ function at another church. It was just a one-time thing. Both of them actually go to my church with me, but they were both at this other church for an event and met each other there. And now it’s funny because my friends who are single who go to that church say, “Oh great, she comes here once and snaps up this guy at our church,” and you kind of see the little territorialism there, but it’s cute. [Laughter]

She uses the same thing; she says, “Lisa, it’s not like I just decided one night to go out to this church. I had been very intentional about praying, about meeting guys, about being willing to go out with different guys. Just the fact that it happened that, here is this guy, I meet him at another church, but we happen to go to the same church…” They didn’t even know one another from our church and stuff, so it just makes it to be an interesting story.

Suzanne: I think there’s a principle of faithfulness for women, and I’d like to encourage single women who want to be married to just be faithful to the Lord. And if you say you want to be married, be open to the guys that God may be putting into your sphere and faithfully walk through that, pray about it and seek the Lord through it. So that’s the part that you can do, and then you can’t predict what God will do.

Lisa:  Well, and I think again, getting back to your story, now that you look back on it, it just seems amazing how it all wove together. But standing there in that Starbucks that night you couldn’t have said to yourself, “Oh I’m going to marry this guy!”

Suzanne: Right.

Lisa:  There was a lot of story ahead to be lived out and so I think we have to look with a certain amount of common sense back on that and say, “Wow, it’s amazing to see how it did work out.” But God had to remain every step ahead of you guys in the whole process because it was still pretty amazing to see what happened in between, during those months.

Well, thank you Suzanne for clarifying that. Hopefully that’s helpful to this listener. I just want to encourage her by saying: do not give up hope for your own story; I know she alluded to that. Your hope for a happy ending is still there; God is still in the business of making great matches at any age and He will continue to do so.

Write to us at editor [at] boundless [dot] org if this is your story or if you’re hoping for this to be your story. We want to keep hearing these stories because they encourage us and I think they encourage all those who hear as well.